Tag: character sheets

Creativity Sessions writing process. Evening Satellite Publishing.

Character Sheet Template: My POV Character’s Details

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Fantasy, On StorytellingLeave a comment

Earlier the month, I discussed my current task to create character sheets for the main characters in my duology of novellas, Uprooted and New Earth. My goal with these is to fill out the flourishes of detail that I skimmed over when first writing these stories, to ensure my characters feel distinct from each other and can each be described consistently.

In that previous post, I listed what I thought would be useful details for me to pin down for each of my main characters. Because these stories deal with family trauma for a clan of extended family, there are a lot of characters. Not all of them will be as fleshed out as others, because some are more side characters.

What I ended up doing was using a basic character template for each member of the clan, and then trimmed it down based on how frequent or significant that character’s appearances are throughout the stories.

For today, I wanted to share the full character template for my primary, point-of-view character: Mikaela.

Character Sheet: Mikaela

Logline: “After her village is attacked, a woman must do everything she can to protect her family.”

Age: 29

Occupation/role: Herbalist and healer; Married to the clan leader with two children; caretaker for her mother-in-law

Physical: I actually don’t have a great description of Mikaela’s physical appearance, because she’s the POV character – it would be odd for her to describe herself, but I should be able to work in a few details naturally, such as the texture/length of her hair.

Clothing: A dagger made from a particular type of stone she wears around her neck tied with a leather cord. This was given to her by her husband as a wedding gift. This type of stone is rare, so this is a precious gift both in its value and its utility for Mikaela as an herbalist.

  • I’d also like to add one or two small details about the clothes Mikaela wears, so I will need to include those in my stories.

How Mikaela…

Thinks/feels about her life in her village: Mikaela likes her village, loves her clan relatives, and especially her clan-sisters, and believes they have everything they need to raise their children. She wishes she had some connection to her mother other than the herbalism Mikaela learned from her. She has not seen her own parents since she was married off to her husband and left the village she grew up in.

Gestures: sighs of exasperation; bites her bottom lip when deep in thought or anxious

What she wants: to raise her son to be a kind man like his father; to raise her daughter to be resilient and to pass her knowledge of herbs and healing onto her

What motivates her: Providing for her children and the rest of their family

What she fears: losing her family – Her husband or son getting killed in the hunt or a raid, her daughter being married off to a different village, never to see her mother again

Filling in the Gaps

As you can see, I have a couple of gaps to fill in for Mikaela’s character sheet, particularly in her clothing and appearance. Because she’s my main character, I wanted her character sheet to be the most detailed, but most of this information came naturally as I was writing.

I will not be going into this level of detail for every character. Even the four or five primary characters around Mikaela will not have this much detail, and the secondary and tertiary characters even less.

In any case, I’m looking forward to completing these and filling in the gaps in my writing as part of my ongoing revision process.

Let me know what you think. Would you take a different approach to character sheets?

Steve D

Creativity Sessions writing process. Evening Satellite Publishing.

My Character Sheet Template

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Creativity Sessions, On StorytellingLeave a comment

One of my goals for this month is to create character sheets for the main characters in my duology, Uprooted and New Earth. I’ve already gone through multiple drafts and revisions for each of these novellas, so why am I doing character sheets now?

Because I didn’t do them initially, and my early drafts of these stories were heavily focused on plot and dialogue, rather than characters. Going into writing Uprooted, the first of this duology, I had a basic idea of who my characters were and how the plot would unfold with them, but not much else. I was focused more on telling the story rather than adding the flourishes of detail that make it feel alive.

Now, I want to go back and make sure that living detail comes off the page. These stories are snapshots of a family dealing with trauma — there are a lot of names and a lot of moving pieces. So, I want the main characters to feel distinct, each with their own expressions, clothes, gestures, and opinions.

I also don’t want to entirely rewrite my story around these details, so I need to work backwards a little bit. I’ll design my character sheet templates, fill in whatever information I already have for each character from what’s already written, and then fill in the blanks.

You can find tons of character sheet templates online, so I’m creating one that fits my fairly specific purpose of retrofitting some details onto established characters. Here’s where I’ll start.

Character Sheet Template

  • The basics: Name, age, role in the family/clan (family roles are vital in these stories)
  • Logline: Something I always write for my major characters — the single sentence that captures what the character is trying to achieve and what stands in their way.
  • Physical description: the details missing for a lot of my characters. I’ll likely stick to 2-4 simple details, such as distinct facial features or posture.
  • Clothing: This family is from a small village, so their dress won’t differ too much. What can standout: head scarves. Children in this society wear particular styles of headscarves until they come of age. Adults then wear these headscarves differently, depending on their role in the family. This is a crucial detail that I want to ensure feels authentic.
  • Personality: How the characters thinks, feels, reacts.
  • What the character wants
  • What the character fears

I could probably go into even more depth, but I don’t want to overload myself for this month. I’m not even sure how many characters I will ultimately create sheets for – likely six, at the least. Perhaps I can create full character sheets for my mains, and slimmed-down versions for more side characters.

I’ll see how much effort this takes me, and, I just may share a couple of the characters’ details later on.

Steve D